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Until recently, innovation was treated as though it were magic, something that either happened or didn't happen but couldn't be controlled. We are now beginning to realize that, while we can't "control" innovation, we can create a culture and context where it is more likely to happen. And, we can use processes that increase the innovation success rate, which, according to Larry Keeley at Doblin, can be as low as 4%. One organization that has worked very hard for the past several years to learn how to replicate and sustain the process of innovation is Best Buy and one of the primary players in this initiative is Kal Patel, Executive Vice-President of Strategy and International.

Patel is an advocate for quickly testing new products and services, stating, "Every one of our associates is trained in a method that starts with a hypothesis, and then proceeds to stages like test and verify. At the end of the experiment, the Associate who undertook it reports out on what he or she has learned.

"These are quick ‘popcorn-stand’ like experiments. If we want to try something new, we might pitch a tent in the parking lot of one of our stores and test an idea out with our customers."

In addition to leading the innovation initiative at Best Buy, Patel finds time to contribute on a broader stage. He accompanied a Red Cross mission to tsunami-impacted Sri Lanka to distribute needed supplies. He stated, "Although the lives of the people here may be devastated, their spirits are not broken, What we are doing, in addition to providing relief supplies, is part of strengthening their spirits."

W.L.Gore is widely noted for its innovation, and its relationship oriented culture. Bob Henn, former head of global R&D for Gore was interviewed by Victoria Cooper and Michael Lecky for PTRM and explained three levels of culture:

"We work differently than many companies who simply tell people what to do. Within the last few years, in fact, we've established three governing bodies within the organization. One is the Operations Committee, which pays attention to the business and the metrics that go along with it. Another is our Intellectual Property Committee, which pays attention to our patent estates, our trademarks, the generation and use of our know-how. And the other one is our People Committee, which attends to our culture. It's on the same level as the other two.

"One of the things I've learned in my years at Gore is that culture is not static. The reality is that work is a social activity, and every time we bring on a new person, our culture changes. When I was recovering from an illness some time ago, I read a lot of the work of Edward Schein, who was a student of Douglas McGregor [a social psychologist who described the "Theory X"; and "Theory Y"; manager in his seminal 1957 treatise]. Douglas McGregor was a person who Bill Gore heard speak in 1954 at DuPont, and a lot of Bill's philosophy came out of the same school. In Schein's model, culture may be viewed as essentially having three levels. At the topmost are "artifacts."; One artifact of our culture is the lack of hierarchy. Everyone at Gore is referred to as an Associate. Another artifact is our lack of corner offices. These artifacts tell you something about our culture. They're the easiest things to observe, but as you dig further, you begin to gain more insight.

"At the middle level are "espoused values": the things we say about ourselves. An example of one of our espoused values is that no one here is free to impair the growth of others. Additionally, no one can make a waterline decision himself, for instance, about whether we relocate people to set up a new operation in another country. The espoused values are easy to discern because they're voiced, but they're often difficult to interpret. At Gore it can take people a couple of years to understand or interpret the espoused values and translate them into applications.

"Digging deeper, the third layer of culture is "underlying assumptions."; This is the most difficult, because it's unarticulated, although it drives everything. One example here at Gore is trusting relationships. That's really important. Another underlying assumption at Gore is the belief, fundamentally, that the individual can make a difference."

Recently profiled in "Fast Company," Robyn Waters brings over 25 years of experience tracking and translating trends into sales and profits, primarily during her years as Vice President for Target. She recently published a book entitled "The Trendmaster’s Guide From A to Z," a practical and fun handbook designed to simplify and demystify the art of trend tracking.

In a recent interview with "The Creative Group," Waters stated, "I have a very nonlinear, nonscientific approach to tracking trends. My book, The Trendmaster’s Guide from A to Z, is a simple, visual handbook that demystifies the art of trend tracking. Most tracking is really just common sense. For instance, A is for Antennae. That’s about awareness, opening your eyes, taking off your blinders and being open to what is really happening in the world around you. I like to quote Yogi Berra, who said, ‘You can observe a lot, just by watching.’ Trends are really just signposts and indicators pointing the way to what’s important in the lives, hearts and minds of consumers. If you look for the meaning behind the indicators, you’ll get to a much better place. I’m very different from a ‘coolhunter’ in that I’m not looking for ‘the next big thing.’ I believe there are many ‘next big things’ and that it’s more important to try and find out what’s important, not just what’s next." The full interview can be found at:http://www.creativegroup.com/Dispatcher?file=/TCG/Interview1104

Waters will be a keynote speaker at "Unblocking Innovation," the 11th annual Convergence of people, ideas and great practices related to innovation to be held in Minneapolis, September 21-23, where she will help people develop their own strategy for becoming their own trendmaster.

Throughout the retail world Waters has been described as an "Ambassador of Trend", a "Champion of Design," a "Builder of Brands," a "Purveyor of Passion," and a "Cheerleader of Possibilities." Previously, Robyn headed up Trend, Design and Product Development for the $48 billion upscale discount store Target. Under her direction as Vice President, the trend and design team traveled the world tracking and translating trends into unique product designs that enhanced Target’s upscale brand image of "Expect More, Pay Less." One of Robyn’s core beliefs is that good taste and great design don’t have to be expensive.

Two of the most influential books in the innovation field are "The Innovator's Dilemma" and the "The Innovator's Solution." "Dilemma" outlined the sometimes counter-intuitive conundrum of innovation and "Solution" provided ideas for how to handle the complexities of innovation.

Michael Raynor, co-author of "The Innovator's Solution" with Clayton Christensen is a keynote speaker at "Unblocking Innovation," the 11th annual Convergence of people, ideas and great practices related to innovation to be held in Minneapolis, September 21-23.

After observing numerous successful and unsuccessful companies, Raynor and his co-author, Clayton Christensen, theorized that innovation is a process that can best be realized in a four-step approach:

1. Identify overshoot: When an industry-leading product enters the mature phase of its lifecycle, it reaches a point where it improves past the expectations and needs of consumers. Unwilling to pay the extra money for extra features they don’t need, customers are open to cheaper or easier-to-use products ... the problem is, these products don’t exist.

2. Find a foothold: Once slivers of the market’s needs are unfulfilled, a disruptive company comes up with something to fill that hole. In "low-end disruption," this can be a cheaper, inferior product targeted at the current incumbent’s lower-end consumers who are willing to pay less money for less quality. In "new market disruption," this means altering a product to better suit a new market that is not being addressed by the current incumbent.

3. Improve what matters: As the new product begins its lifecycle, it has to get better while keeping in mind the needs of its consumers. This usually means improving quality while keeping costs low.

4. Catch up with the needs of mainstream consumers: Eventually, a disruptive company develops until it reaches a point of contention with the product leader. Its disruptive business model gives the new company the power to surpass the old one.

A brilliant and galvanizing speaker, Raynor is a uniquely qualified expert on creating and sustaining business growth. In addition to his work with Christensen, he is a director for Deloitte, the global profesional services firm, and part of Deloitte Research, the thought leadership arm of Deloitte. He has a great depth of experience and theoretical understanding of the innovation field and will share best practices from around the world with Convergence participants.

"Executives average 23 hours per week in meetings...7.8 hours of the 23 are unnecessary and poorly run...This equals 2.3 months per year."-- from http://www.mcnellisco.com

Last week we talked about lost productivity especially as it related to meetings and asked for your thoughts on why meetings are still so ineffective when we have such a plethora of books, article, workshops and techniques to make them better.

I decided to ask one of the wisest people I know (Jerry McNellis, founder and director of the Compression Planning Institute) why we’re in this state and, as usual, he had a perspective worth thinking about. "First of all," he said, "the problem isn’t with meetings."

That was enough to grab my attention, and, perhaps yours. Here are some of Jerry’s thoughts:

Even worse than the statistics on meetings is the data about projects. There are many studies about the dismal rate of success for projects. One that I use a lot comes from the Standish Group which tracks information technology projects. There findings are that 23% of the projects were outright failures, 49% were over budget or didn’t meet the deliverables and 28% were deemed successes. 94% of all projects are restarted and average $2.22 spent for every dollar budgeted.

The results for all projects in general are probably pretty similar. And the question is "Why?" Why is the success rate for projects so low? And, why do meetings tend to be so ineffective? The real issue is an organization’s thinking system. Meetings and projects are simply a reflection of the ability of an organization to think collaboratively. We spend very little time improving this ability and almost no effort measuring it.

A few years ago, I had the good fortune to hear Mohammad Yunus, pioneer of the microlending program, speak in Argentina. Not only did all 6000 of us in the audience fall in love with him, we were awed by the power of his program to help people lift themselves out of poverty. Click here to buy the book.

His book provides a glimpse of this powerful program and the editorial review includes this statement: Yunus's theories work. Grameen Bank has provided 3.8 billion dollars to 2.4 million families in rural Bangladesh. Today, more than 250 institutions in nearly 100 countries operate micro-credit programs based on the Grameen methodology, placing Grameen at the forefront of a burgeoning world movement toward eradicating poverty through micro-lending.

Grameen is profiled by Fast Company in the January issue of Social Capitalist awards.

In the winter of 1964, Nelson Mandela arrived on Robben Island where he would spend 18 of his 27 prison years. Confined to a small cell, the floor his bed, a bucket for a toilet, he was forced to do hard labor in a quarry. He was allowed one visitor a year for 30 minutes. He could write and receive one letter every six months. But Robben Island became the crucible which transformed him. Through his intelligence, charm and dignified defiance, Mandela eventually bent even the most brutal prison officials to his will, assumed leadership over his jailed comrades and became the master of his own prison. He emerged from it the mature leader who would fight and win the great political battles that would create a new democratic South Africa.

Kudos to Fast Company (issue: April, 2004) for putting a human face on the complex and controversial issue of outsourcing.

And, jeers to Michael Mullarkey, CEO of Workstream, Inc., a Canadian-based tech company, for saying "I'm paying $65,000 Canadian for developers that were making $147,000 [in California], and they're smiling ear to ear. People are a dime a dozen." (Quoted in the same Fast Company article)

I highly doubt that anyone working for a CEO who views people as a commodity is truly "smiling ear to ear." Workstream's website bills it as a "full talent management solution" and "the business of people" and "targets the major stakeholders in building employment relationships." Hmmmm ... someone's not walking the talk.

Compare this leadership Neaderthal to Costco's CEO Jim Sinegal who refuses to ship his call center offshore because he doesn't think it would create the right image in the minds of his customers and employees.

As some economists have noted, offshoring stops making sense when everyone is doing it. Not only does the cost advantage go away, but so also do the customers who no longer have salaries and money to buy the products and services made by all the cheap labor.

In freshman economics, I learned the principle of ceteris paribus (defined as "With all other factors or things remaining the same.") However, the most important part of this principle is that it doesn't happen. All other things are never ever the same. You can't change one thing and hope that nothing else changes. All actions have reactions. And most of us are having the same corporate reaction these days: they (big corporations) just don't care about us as employees or as customers. Even Delta Airlines, once a paragon of service, is now rated #14!

The Fast Company article states that 1,000,000 Americans have had their jobs sent offshore. Think about the math. That probably turns into 5,000,000 close family members, 25,000,000 friends and relatives, and 100,000,000 friends, relatives, neighbors and working associates still sitting at their desks wondering when it's their turn. One contagious strategic decision is spreading a virus that affects one third of our population.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the list is the criteria used to judge the selection as listed below.

Check out the list at and then think about the criteria below ... would you add or change anything? Isthere someone who should be on the list but isn't? Please add your thoughts in the comments section below.

"If at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it."
-- Albert Einstein

For any of you who aren’t pop culture fans, here’s the scene:

In an attempt to attract young viewers and ratings, a television show is created to find the best new singers in the U.S. (called American Idol). Televised over a series of weeks, the latter part of the series features some credible talent performing in various ways with all of the drama and tears of winners and losers. The early part of the series is a humorous romp through the antics of clueless wannabes. The beginnings of this season’s series showcased a cross-country parade of people who should have been given some honest feedback years ago. To say that they lacked talent doesn’t begin to explain how some of the contestants could even have thought about performing in public.

But, like creativity in general, how do we judge talent? And, what does it take to be an American Idol? In San Francisco, a seemingly untalented young man stood up in front of the notoriously harsh judge Simon Cowell and began one of the most eccentric performances seen in the nationwide talent search. Or was it?